Long weekend in Barcelona

Debbie Kearney on 13 March 2013
As you can imagine, I have a long wish-list of places I would like to visit and Barcelona was very high up under the city break options. When our friends invited us to join them in Barcelona to celebrate a significant birthday, we jumped at the opportunity!

We travelled out of a sunny but cold Liverpool, arriving just over two hours later to a very wet Barcelona! However, this didn't deter us. After checking in at our hotel we were soon making our way into the centre via the efficient Metro system and walking along Las Ramblas. Fortunately we were blessed with lovely sunshine for the rest of our stay.

Barcelona has so much to see and do. We opted for the hop-on/hop-off tour bus on the Thursday which enabled us to see so much of the city and we then returned over the following two days to places of particular interest to us. My husband was keen to visit Nou Camp Experience, the stadium of FC Barcelona. We all really enjoyed the self-tour and felt it was definitely worth a visit - even for a non-football fan such as me! Friday was a walking day and oh did we walk! Almost 13 miles (yes, we did have a pedometer!)

We had decided to return to the Montjuic area as we viewed it from the bus. We were keen to see from outside the Museu Nacional d'Art Catalunya as our friend is a keen photographer and it really is a very attractive building with stunning views over the city. We spent some time there taking lots of photos and just soaking up the beauty. We then headed to Poble Espanyol, the 'Spanish Village' which has lots of lovely art and craft wares to view and try. We had a pleasant couple of hours wandering round before sitting in the sunshine for a delicious lunch of paella and sangria! That afternoon we took the cable car from Montjuic down to Barceloneta which gave us fabulous scenic views of the port area.

After dark, we returned to the Museu Nacional d'Art Catalunya to watch the fountains lightshow. The water changed colour and 'danced' to the music - stunning and well worth viewing.

On Saturday we headed to Sagrada Familia to photograph Barcelona's most famous building. It really is quite an amazing sight. Later on we took an afternoon stroll along the promenade of Port Olimpic and Port Vell.

We had a wonderful few days in Barcelona.....I recommend you go!